Pentagon creates advisory council on human performance, health

After creating a new directorate on warfighter optimization within the Department of Defense, the Pentagon announced it will form a federal advisory committee to weigh in on issues affecting troop performance and health. According to a Federal Register notice Tuesday, the $1.4 million committee will focus “exclusively on human performance,” providing guidance and insight on improving function, combating the physical, mental and emotional tolls of military service known collectively as “operator syndrome,” and preventing physical injuries and operational stress. “The Council will serve as a high-impact, low-cost mechanism for the [DoD] to secure the expertise of the nation’s foremost leaders at the nexus of warrior health and performance,” the announcement stated. The Pentagon established a Warfighter Performance Optimization division earlier this year within Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata’s office. It is intended to oversee and coordinate the individual services’ efforts to improve troops’ readiness and performance. In May, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed Tata to report on existing optimization initiatives across the services to create a department-wide performance optimization plan. Hegseth said he wanted to accelerate fielding technologies that will improve performance — such as wearable devices and other analytics tools — and focus on elevating “cognitive performance as a key to readiness.” “By building on and modernizing the principles of Total Force Fitness (TFF), WPO will deliver a unified operational approach to accelerate readiness, dominance, and peak performance across the Force. We will treat the Warfighter as a readiness capability, held to the same disciplined evaluation, maintenance, and optimization we demand of every asset that preserves combat power,” Hegseth wrote. The services have created their own approaches to health, fitness and human performance within the last several years. Army introduced its Holistic Health and Fitness initiative in 2020 to improve the health of the force and reduce the number of soldiers considered non-deployable because of chronic medical conditions. The Navy introduced its Human Performance Optimization program as a pilot in San Diego in February, providing training and education on nutrition, sleep, injury prevention and stress management. The Marine Corps has had a total fitness strategy since 2023 that combines wellness, fitness, mental health and data to improve the health of members, while the Air Force is building a new human performance optimization facility at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, which is designed to support Air Force Special Warfare airmen. The new advisory committee will have up to 20 members with expertise in an array of scientific and medical fields, including urology, endocrinology, nutrition, neurology, combat stress, orthopedics, preventive medicine, wearable technology or spiritual, psychiatric or psychological health, sleep medicine and human factors engineering. As with all federal advisory committees, volunteers are unpaid and only receive travel pay and per diem reimbursement when conducting council-related business. The announcement described the council as “an exceptionally cost-effective resource.” The newly formed group, the announcement stated, will provide information that helps the services create “lethal, operationally ready warriors prepared physically, psychologically, for successful large-scale, high kinetic, combat operations against peer adversaries who are imbued with the essential Warrior Ethos to win decisively,” the announcement stated. Shortly after Hegseth took office last year, he dismissed the members of roughly 40 Defense Department advisory boards and launched reviews to determine whether they supported his goal to “revive the warrior ethos” in the U.S. armed forces. The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services and the Defense Advisory Committee for the Prevention of Sexual Misconduct were among those terminated. Hegseth has also created several new advisory boards since being sworn in, most recently, the Homeland Defense Board, announced Sept. 11, which he plans to chair. The board will provide guidance on military support for homeland security missions.